Children of War
by SouthSideStory
Summary: Minato thinks the girl from Uzushio is beautiful. He wants to tell her that she's brave and fierce and he would like to be her friend. There are many things Minato would like to say to Uzumaki Kushina, but any time he looks in her direction she just glares back and asks what he's staring at.
1. Chapter 1

_Trigger warning: This story contains scenes of domestic abuse and child abuse._

* * *

 **Chapter One**

* * *

Years later, this is what Uzumaki Kushina will remember of Whirlpool: the impossible blue of the waters, rippling with gold at dawn, a little of the rising sun captured by the river; Okaasan's bright laughter; the rich smells of her grandmother's cooking, spiced fish and steamed rice and jasmine tea; the sea-salt taste of tears on her lips; the scent of tobacco that clings to Otousan's clothes, familiar and comforting as a lullaby.

A Konoha shinobi takes her away from her home in the middle of the night, just two weeks after Kushina has turned nine years old.

Okaasan cries and clings to her and whispers, "Be a good girl while you're away."

Otousan kisses her forehead. "I know you'll make me proud," he says.

Her older brothers look on with white faces as a stranger takes her by the arm, and Shiro holds Hidenori back to keep him from attacking the Leaf nin.

It's a dark night, the moon new, the sky starless, and Kushina can barely see Uzushiogakure as she leaves. She will have nothing to cherish later, no last sight of the home she loves to hold dear.

On the long journey to the heart of the Fire Country, Kushina asks her escort questions—Why does she have to leave Whirlpool? How long will it take to reach Konoha? What does the Leaf want from her?—but the man behind the mask has little to say. He tells her to be quiet, keep up, and do as she is told.

Kushina has studied the ninja arts since she was five, and part of her wants to fight, but she wouldn't stand a chance against a full-fledged Konoha shinobi.

Besides, this man didn't steal her. Kushina knows that her clan—her family—they _gave_ her away.

* * *

The Hokage says they are not at war.

Shinobi leave the village and never come back, more and more every week. Minato visits the cenotaph and sees new names engraved there. Characters on stone because there is nothing to return to the grieving families, the bodies of the dead lost or mutilated or left behind. Minato is only nine, but he's old enough to understand these things. Old enough to know when he's being lied to.

Today, he sits on the roof of a weapons shop and watches the people milling in and out of Konoha's gates. Farmers bringing fresh produce into the village, ninja leaving to carry out missions. Minato eats a bun the baker gave him, something left over from yesterday's stock. It's stale and cold and a little bit hard, but the bread still tastes like butter. Besides, he didn't have dinner last night or breakfast this morning, and just now he'd eat nearly anything to quiet the ache in his stomach.

He's just about to search out some other amusement when he sees the Hokage meeting an ANBU and a young girl. The ninja is as masked and inscrutable as every member of his order. The girl looks to be about his own age, and she has long, red hair that catches the summer sunlight. Minato wonders what could be so important about her, that the Hokage himself came to greet her at the gates.

He hardly thinks of the red-haired girl throughout the rest of the day, and by evening he's too nervous about going back to his house to much care about the mystery surrounding her arrival. Hunger drives him home with the setting sun, a hollowness in the pit of his belly, familiar and unwanted.

"You're late," Otousan says, as soon as he walks through the door.

"I'm sorry," Minato answers, even though he isn't.

He takes his place at the small kitchen table, and Okaasan serves dinner. Her hands tremble as she sets the bowls of soup before her husband and son, but she's careful not to spill them; Otousan hates a mess almost as much as he hates dishonesty.

"Thanks," Minato says, and his mother gives him a rare smile.

The soup is thin, too much broth and little else, but he knows better than to comment on this. Work has been slow for his father all summer, and besides, it would hurt Okaasan's feelings if he complained.

There is no talk around the dinner table. Silence woven between the sounds of three people eating not-quite-enough. It's a nervous quiet, fraught with tension, until Otousan breaks it. He calls the Academy a school for liars and says, "You must fit right in, then, huh?"

Minato doesn't know if his father wants him to answer or not, so he just keeps his head down.

He's used to this, though: Otousan's temper, Okaasan's fearful obedience, his own silence. If he were braver, Minato might tell his father what he really thinks—that Namikaze Katsuo is an ignorant man who mistrusts shinobi because he's afraid of them. He has no desire to go to bed hungry again, however, so he keeps his mouth shut.

The next morning, his belly growls loudly in the middle of taijutsu training, and the other children laugh.

Minato punches Yamanaka Inoichi in the eye, and he falls to the ground, clutching the left side of his face. Hyuuga Hiashi comes for him, but Minato is fast—the fastest child at the Academy, even though he only started last month **—** and he gets behind the older boy easily enough, kicks him in the back of the head.

No one is laughing at him anymore.

Minato helps Hiashi up and asks, "Are you okay?"

The Hyuuga heir frowns. "I don't understand you, Namikaze," he says.

He has noticed that the children from the older clans like to call him by his surname. Maybe as a reminder that they come from ancient and honorable families, while Minato's father is a bricklayer.

* * *

Before she came to Konoha, Kushina never thought much about her hair. It's red like her mother's and father's and brothers'. Red like many of the Uzumakis of Uzushio. Long, because this is the style of the women in Whirlpool, whether civilian or kunoichi. But in the Leaf, she's heard nothing but "tomato" for her round face and her bright hair.

Her schoolmates call her foreigner and outsider. By the end of her first week at the Academy, Kushina has fought half the boys in her class and beaten them all. She goes back to the house she shares with her shinobi guards and Mito (the vast estate that she refuses to think of as home) and nurses her scrapes and bruises.

 _I hate it here_ , she thinks. _I want to go back to Uzushio._

But she can't. They won't let her.

It's on her thirteenth day in Konoha that the Hokage and Mito finally sit her down and explain her purpose to her.

"You're to be the second jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails," the Sandaime says.

Kushina knows what this means. She does, after all, come from a clan famed for its sealing abilities, and the Kyubi is feared far and wide as the worst of the tailed beasts.

A vessel for a monster. That's what they're going to turn her into.

"Why?" Kushina asks. "Why me?"

"Because your chakra is special, powerful," says Mito. "Strong enough to suppress the might of the Nine-Tails… just like mine."

Mito reaches across the table and takes her hand. The old woman's skin is soft and paper-thin. So frail and fragile that Kushina can hardly believe she holds within her body the most powerful of the bijuu.

"But what if I don't want to be a jinchuriki?"

The Hokage shakes his head. "You were chosen, Kushina."

He doesn't say anything more, but she understands. She was chosen, and the chosen don't get to choose.

"It won't happen right away," Mito says softly. "I have a year left, maybe more. We won't entrust the Kyubi to you until my time draws nearer."

"And then you'll die." Mito is the only person in this village who has been kind to her, and Kushina doesn't want to be the cause of her death.

"Yes, I will," Mito says. "But first I'll have lived as a proud kunoichi of both Uzushio and Konoha. And someday you'll want to be able to say the same."

Kushina nods, even though she doesn't quite know what Mito means.

* * *

Minato thinks the girl from Uzushio is beautiful. Her hair is long, thick, and red, and he's never seen anything quite like it before.

He wants to tell her that he's new to the Academy too, and he knows what it's like to be an outsider. That she's brave and fierce and he would like to be her friend. There are many things Minato would like to say to Uzumaki Kushina, but any time he looks in her direction she just glares back and asks what he's staring at.

He sees her as he leaves the Academy. She's sitting by herself on the swing, and she looks tired and lonely. Maybe he should tell her what he thinks of her, or at least say hello. He takes a first step toward Kushina, but for some reason he feels nervous, and he turns toward home instead.

Minato _never_ feels nervous. Not even when Jiraiya caught him practicing his jutsu in the closed Academy at night, and he thought for sure he was going to be chastised by one of the legendary Sannin. Instead of being reprimanded, Jiraiya insisted that he join the Academy. His father didn't like the idea, of course, but a civilian does not say no to a jounin, and a week later Minato was enrolled.

The daylight is dying, and Minato hurries along, heading south toward the poorest district of Konoha. Houses grow smaller and dingier, the streets narrower, gardens replaced by garbage. The signs for businesses are gaudier here, as if they can make up for the cheapness of their wares with bright colors. Most of Konoha carries the scents of trees and flowers, but all Minato can smell here is trash, things rotten and unwanted.

He's heard that Kushina lives with Senju Mito, the First Hokage's widow, in that grand house on the northwest edge of the village. What would she think of his own home, where it's too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, and so small that it barely has room for Minato's family of three? He believes that she wouldn't care. That a girl like Kushina doesn't put much stock in things like that.

Still, when he reaches his family's house, he sees it with fresh eyes. How it's squeezed between a pawn shop and a used clothing store. The peeling paint is more grey than blue now, and when he steps inside he's reminded that the furniture is mismatched and threadbare. All secondhand, someone else's junk.

Okaasan stands at the stove, stirring a pot of what Minato hopes is not soup for the fifth night in a row. "How was school?" she asks.

"Fine," he says. Today he learned the three best techniques for breaking a target's neck and worked on his transformation jutsu, but he doesn't think his mother would want to hear that.

After dinner, Minato goes to his room and tries to ignore the cries coming through the thin walls. He starts to read a book, but between the lines he hears the stinging sound of his father laying hands on his mother. Otousan screaming and Okaasan crying. He closes his eyes and covers his ears, wanting to stop what's happening but knowing he can't. That within these four walls and under this roof, he's powerless. He needs to think of something else, anything else, and for some reason his thoughts go to the girl from Uzushio. Fierce Kushina, who always stands up for herself, who doesn't back down from a fight. She's brave and strong and she never gives up, and thinking about her makes Minato feel just the slightest bit less afraid.

He ventures out of his room once it's quiet, and he finds his mother sitting at the kitchen table. Okaasan's pale face is tear-streaked, but she's no longer crying. Her eyes look empty, vacant, her expression blank. Purple bruises already bloom on her left cheek and around her wrists like bracelets. Blood runs from her nose, drips down her chin onto her cotton yukata. Minato runs cool water over a dishtowel, wrings it out, and wipes his mother's face. She sits, still as a statue, while he cleans her up, and doesn't say anything. Then he washes his hands under scalding water, once, twice, until they're tender, pink, and clean.

It's almost like a script they follow. A ritual they have performed before and will perform again.

* * *

Kushina knows Namikaze Minato, of course, the boy-wonder who has mastered more jutsu in a month than his classmates have learned in five years of study. Some of their peers love him for this—especially the girls—and some of them hate him for it. The awestruck claim he'll be the next Hokage for sure, but Kushina thinks that's stupid; the Yondaime will be one of the Sannin. The cruel say he lives in a one-room shack, that his parents are illiterate as well as untrained in the shinobi arts.

Even if it's half-true, none of this matters to Kushina. What matters is that Minato is staring at her, _again_.

"What are you looking at?" she asks.

His sky blue eyes widen and he turns around without answering her.

Kushina doesn't understand why Minato does this. Maybe he thinks she's ugly like the rest of the boys do, but he's too polite to say so, if not quite polite enough not to gawk at her.

Koichi-sensei says, "Today we'll be working on nature transformation at the most basic level. You all learned your nature types last week. Find the classmates who are the same type as you and group together."

Kushina doesn't go to her classmates, and no one comes to her. That is, until Minato approaches. "Hi," he says. "I'm wind. What are you?"

"Fire," Kushina says.

"Oh." He sounds almost like he's disappointed. "Then you're over there with Ando and the others."

Uchiha Ando is the boy Kushina hates most. He's arrogant and mean, and he calls her much uglier names than tomato. He glares at her when she joins his group but doesn't say anything.

Koichi-sensei teaches them a simple ninjutsu form that sparks red-gold flames in your cupped hands. Ando performs it successfully on his third try—faster than anyone except, predictably, for Minato, who mastered his own wind ninjutsu on his first attempt.

"Let's work together," says Mikoto, who is some sort of cousin to Ando. Kushina doesn't hold this against her, though, because Mikoto seems uncommonly kind and humble for an Uchiha.

"Okay," Kushina says.

Together, they soon have handsful of fire, and Mikoto says, "See, your element is just like our country's. You belong here, no matter what those boys tell you."

Kushina's cheeks grow hot, and she can't think of much to say besides, "Thank you."

That night, she tells Mito about what Mikoto said, and the old woman smiles. "She's right, you know. This is your home now."

"Uzushio is my home," Kushina says, maybe a little sharper than she should.

"You don't have to lose Uzushio to embrace Konoha," Mito says patiently.

Kushina considers this, so the next day after class she walks right up to Mikoto and asks, "Would you like to be my friend?"

The Uchiha girl laughs. "I'd love to," she says.

* * *

Minato goes to the Academy every day and learns new ways to disguise himself and hide and kill. In the morning he studies grammar and mathematics, and in the afternoon he practices hurling shuriken at targets. He finds that most of the ninja arts come easily to him. Perhaps Otousan is right, and this is because Minato is a liar, and liars make good shinobi.

Okaasan's bruises fade from purple to a sickly yellow-green, then disappear, only for his father to give her fresh marks the very next week. Summer turns to autumn, and autumn turns to winter. Minato reads and practices his jutsu and helps his mother on the nights when she can't help herself. In the spring, Koichi-sensei moves him up to the advanced class with twelve- and thirteen-year-old students who are on the verge of becoming genin. Mostly, he's excited to learn more challenging material, but a small part of him wonders whether he will ever see Kushina anymore.

In May, Minato graduates from the Academy with the highest scores of any student since the school was instituted.

He earns his hitai-ate, but when he wears it into the house, Otousan rips it off his head and says, "Not here, not under my roof."

Minato thinks about telling his father that he graduated ahead of every student who has ever passed through the doors of the Academy. But he knows that Otousan would not be proud, would not even care, so he tells his mother instead.

"That's nice, Minato," she says, dully, as if he just reported the weather to her.

He leaves the house—he can't stand to be stuck here, not one moment longer—and he runs across the village, back to the Academy. He finds Kushina where he hoped she might be, on the swing where she often sits after class. She digs her sandal into the dirt, scowling at the ground. Her knees and knuckles are scraped, he notices.

"Did you get into another fight?" he asks.

She looks up and frowns at him. "What do you want, Minato?"

At least she calls him by his given name. That's something. "I graduated today," he says. "I was at the top of my class."

"I know. Everybody knows. Koichi-sensei wouldn't shut up about how brilliant you are."

Minato feels himself blush. "Oh."

Kushina tilts her head to the side, and her long hair spills over her shoulder. "Are you here to brag, or what?"

"No, I just—I wanted to talk to someone about it."

"Didn't you tell your parents?" she asks.

"They're civilians," Minato says. "They don't really get what it means to make genin." This isn't the truth. The civilians of Konoha live in the shadow of the shinobi they cater to, and they understand the ninja hierarchy as well as anyone. Perhaps Kushina is still too new to the Leaf to know this, because she doesn't contradict him.

She makes an expression that's almost, but not quite, a smile. "Well, good for you," Kushina says. "I mean it. You'll make a great genin."

"Thanks." Minato tries not grin too widely, but he can't help it. Uzumaki Kushina just wished him well and told him he'd be a good ninja.

"I've gotta go," she says. "I don't want Mito to worry."

"Right. I'll see you later then?"

"Yeah," she says. "Sure."

Those are the last words Kushina speaks to him for over three years.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** So this is my MinaKushi prequel story. I have a lot of feelings for these two characters, mostly due to SilverShine's fabulous fic, _The Girl from Whirlpool_. This chapter was written many months ago, but due to the number of projects I'm already juggling, I didn't want to start another multi-chapter and so decided to hold it back. But what the hell, I really want to share it, and this seems like the right time.

As I stated in the trigger warning above, and as I'm sure you noticed reading this chapter, this story will feature domestic abuse and child abuse. I realize this is not everyone's cup of tea, but for a number of reasons (some of them personal), this is the story I envisioned for Minato and which I really wanted to tell.

I'm planning for this fic to span from Minato and Kushina's childhood up until the day of their deaths. What I really want to explore with this story is the effect that training children to be soldiers can have (especially during a time of war), the ethics of the shinobi system in general, and of course the characters that make up that system.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

* * *

Mito's health deteriorates over the summer, and by July she's bedridden and barely able to sit up on her own. Sometimes her son and granddaughter, Tsunade, come to visit her, sometimes the Hokage himself. Kushina knows what's coming, and she's scared. She doesn't want Mito to die, doesn't want to become a jinchuriki.

Five Uzushio shinobi arrive in Konoha the morning after her tenth birthday, and it's so good to see someone else from home—her _real_ home—that at first Kushina doesn't understand what this means.

It's Mito who tells her. "They're here to seal the Nine-Tails into you," she says slowly, patiently, her breathing labored.

"When?" Kushina asks.

"Tomorrow night." Mito reaches for her with a trembling hand, and Kushina hugs her. She smells like cherry blossoms and maple and lilac, like the forests of Konoha.

"I'm not ready to let you go," she says.

Mito rubs soothing circles on her back and asks, "Do you remember what I told you? About how to survive the jinchuriki's life?"

"Yes. Love. I have to love." Kushina hasn't cried since the day Daisuke's genin brother pulled her hair and called her an outsider, and she tells herself she doesn't have the luxury of letting grief overtake her now.

"Never forget that," Mito says.

"I won't," Kushina promises. "I won't."

It's the Sandaime's stern wife who helps her prepare for the ritual. She bathes her in a tub of scalding water, so hot that it turns her fair skin pink. Biwako scrubs her back, chest, arms, and legs, even the soles of her feet. Afterward, she combs Kushina's wet hair and plaits it into a long, red braid. Then she dresses her in a white silk kimono and dabs rose oil on the pulse points at her neck and wrists.

"Why are you trying to make me pretty?" Kushina asks.

"This is the way things are done," Biwako answers, which isn't really an answer at all.

Kushina makes the long walk across the village with the Hokage's wife and two ANBU guards. Busy with their own lives, no one seems to notice them. She passes the bakery, the apothecary, the flower shop where she sometimes buys Mito's favorite lilies. The florist looks right past her, as if they've never met. Maybe she doesn't recognize that the clean child in the white kimono is Uzumaki Kushina, the girl who is always dirty and bruised.

But she feels someone watching her, and when she glances up she sees a small figure perched on the roof of the candy store. The setting sun frames him, outlining the boy in light and casting his face in shadow, but Kushina knows who it is just the same: Minato.

"Kushina!" Biwako says. "Keep moving."

"Sorry." She lets Biwako take her hand and march her through the streets of Konoha. Still, she looks over her shoulder, searching for one last sight of the boy on the roof. Minato waves at her, and for a moment, inexplicably, Kushina feels a bit braver.

They take her to an underground shrine on the western outskirts of the village. The place is unrelenting grey rock, cold and ancient. The air grows chilled despite the summer heat as she descends the stairs, down and down into darkness. One of the ANBU guards opens a door, and suddenly there's light. Braziers and torches bathe the wide room in an unearthly red glow, and Kushina sees that Mito is already there, stretched out on a stone table. It looks almost like a funeral bier, the old woman a corpse.

There's a second table, empty, waiting for Kushina. Biwako unties the obi around her waist, opens her kimono, and helps her lie down. Two of the Uzushio shinobi stand next to Mito, and three next to Kushina.

Mito turns her head and smiles at her. "It will be over soon," she says.

Kushina should close her eyes, but she can't seem to make herself. Instead, she watches as broken, black lines web across Mito's body, starting at the seal on her belly and stretching across her face and arms like dark veins, then extending into the air itself. These lines wrap around columns that support the shrine's ceiling, chaining Mito to them, and she gasps, chokes.

"You're hurting her!" Kushina says, and she starts to sit up, but one of the men from Uzushio—her clan, her family—holds her down, strong hands pinning her to the table. She fights, but the shinobi is older and stronger, and it's easy for him to restrain her.

"Mito-san," she cries, but the old woman is beyond hearing. A strange, red chakra cloaks her body, and Kushina can see the outline of tails—one, two, three of them. Can hear a sound almost like water, bubbling and boiling, except that this fills the room, overwhelming and ominous.

Four Uzushio ninja make hand seals simultaneously. Mito's belly runs black, and the red chakra spills forth from it. She can just make out the shape of a canine face, before the chakra comes toward her, envelops her, and plunges into her stomach.

Then she _feels_ him, the Nine-Tails, and Kushina screams.

* * *

Minato's teammates are Horikita Hiroshi and Aragaki Yuka. Hiroshi is a round-faced boy with narrow eyes and a hoarse voice, Yuka a skinny black-haired girl, cold and reserved. Both come from shinobi families nearly as old as the village itself, and neither enjoyed being upstaged at their own graduation by a boy two years their junior. He had hoped to find friends on his team, but Hiroshi and Yuka seem determined to dislike him.

"They're jealous," Jiraiya-sensei says, one day after training. Yuka and Hiroshi already hurried back to their homes, but Minato lingered behind, hoping to spend more time with his teacher, and Jiraiya took him to a restaurant for dinner.

"Because I graduated ahead of them?"

Jiraiya nods. "You're younger than they are, but you're the better ninja and they know it." He looks Minato up and down and says, "Remind me what your father does."

Minato doesn't allow himself to blush. "He's a bricklayer, sensei."

"That doesn't help you either," Jiraiya says bluntly. "Trust me, I know. My father's a carpenter. Next to Princess Tsunade, granddaughter of the First Hokage, I'm practically a peasant." He drinks a cup of sake and pours another.

Minato takes a bite of braised pork, so tender that the fat seems to melt in his mouth. It's the best meat he's ever tasted in his life, and he wonders how much this meal is going to cost his sensei. He chews, swallows, and says, "But you're one of the Sannin now. I bet no one remembers who your father is anymore."

Jiraiya laughs. "You're right, they don't. If you're good enough, eventually no one will give a damn about where you come from."

"Do you think I'm good enough?" Minato asks.

His sensei gives him a lopsided grin. "Definitely," he says, and there's such pride in Jiraiya's voice that Minato has to smile back. "Now eat up. I'm going to put ten pounds on you before this summer is over."

After dinner, Minato goes home. He takes the long way, because things have been worse than usual since he made genin, and he doesn't want to see Otousan any sooner than he has to.

The night he brought home his first mission's earnings, Minato's father told him to keep his money. "I provide for this family, not you," Otousan had said.

The ryo he received were few enough, but he still made more in a day than his father did for a week of work. So he stashed his earnings in a cardboard box beneath his bed and told himself that he could save for his own place, and as soon as he has enough to pay for an apartment he'll leave this house and never come back. It's a nice dream, but Minato knows he won't really do it; he loves Okaasan, and he can't leave her alone with his father.

As soon as he walks through the door, Otousan asks where he's been and why it took him so long to get home.

"I went to a restaurant with Jiraiya-sensei," Minato says.

His father scowls and asks, "Did you let him buy your dinner?"

"No," Minato lies, straight-faced. "I used my money."

"Good," Otousan says. "You don't take charity from anybody, you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

Later, after the house is dark and locked, Minato lies awake, staring up at the ceiling. The headboard of his parents' bed hits the wall that separates his room from theirs, making a rhythmic thumping noise. He can't sleep for the racket, and he wonders whether his mother is crying tonight. If her belly will swell like it did last year, thicken with a baby that will never take breath. (Otousan doesn't want any more children, and so there will be no brothers or sisters for Minato).

 _I wish Jiraiya were my father_. His sensei would never hit Okaasan, or rape her, or force her to throw away her baby before it could be born.

The next day, Minato is slow and sluggish during training, and Yuka manages to kick him in the face. He falls to the ground, and the taste of iron floods his mouth. Minato spits out a mouthful of blood and wipes his lips with the back of his hand, angry with himself for letting his guard down. Yuka and Hiroshi laugh until Jiraiya-sensei says, "Shut up, both of you."

"Minato beats us all the time, and you never tell _him_ to be quiet," Hiroshi says, frowning.

"Minato never laughs at you when you're down," Jiraiya says.

After this, Minato focuses, and by the end of training Yuka and Hiroshi are both lying in the dirt. Jiraiya helps them up and sends them home. Minato starts to leave too, but his sensei catches him by the shoulder and says, "Not so fast. What's wrong with you today?"

"Nothing." Minato makes himself smile, because if he has learned anything from ten years in his father's house, it's that what happens behind closed doors stays there. "I'm fine. Really."

This is the first lie he's told Jiraiya-sensei, but it won't be the last.

* * *

Kushina thought she understood what it would mean to be a jinchuriki, but now she knows how foolish that was. How childish.

She carries the weight of the Kyubi with her wherever she goes. She feels his vitality, the pure power of him, imprisoned within her body. At night she lies awake and cries for Mito, and some part of her (that isn't truly any part of her at all) thinks, _The old woman deserved to die_.

Uchiha Ando continues to call her names—ugly, foreigner, bitch—whenever Koichi-sensei's back is turned, and Kushina fights him. One day when she has Ando pinned to the ground, she hears a harsh voice whisper, _Break his neck. Twist to the right, the way you learned, and he'll never bother you again_. She scrambles away from the boy, afraid to touch him, terrified that she'll succumb to the Kyubi.

Kushina remembers Mito's advice, that the only way to overcome the Nine-Tails' hatred is to love, so she spends as much time with Mikoto as she can. But even her friendship is not always enough to suppress the beast, and as she's braiding Mikoto's beautiful, blue-black hair, this thought comes from nowhere: _Take out those famous Uchiha eyes before the sharingan can awaken, and she'll never be a better ninja than you_. Kushina looks down and finds she's already drawn a kunai. She bites back a scream, puts the dagger away, and tells Mikoto she has to go home early today.

She walks from the Uchiha compound back to the grand, old house that feels so cold and empty without Mito. On the way, a fruit vendor tries to sell her a tomato, and it's all Kushina can do to keep from overturning his cart. That isn't the Nine-Tails' ill humor at work; just her own. Although it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

Kushina doesn't see much of Namikaze Minato, her erstwhile classmate, but she hears about him plenty. He and his team have successfully completed every mission the Hokage sets, and rumor has it they've moved up to B-rank assignments, unheard of for a group of genin. The next winter, Team Jiraiya takes the chunin exams, and to no one's surprise, Minato makes it to the final test.

Kushina sits in the stands and watches him move through older opponents as if they're nothing. First he defeats Arigaki Tsuda, his own teammate's older brother, then Nara Shikaku with his clever shadow jutsu. He goes all the way to the final round, where he squares off against a solemn-faced Uchiha boy who looks to be at least fourteen.

"Go Fugaku!" Mikoto shouts.

"You're so predictable," Kushina says, smiling. "You cheer for anyone from your clan, and nobody else."

Mikoto shrugs and says, "What can I say? I'm an Uchiha to my bones."

 _You're an Uchiha before you're a citizen of Konoha_ , Kushina thinks, but doesn't say.

Down in the arena, the boys have already started to fight. Minato moves so fast that Kushina can barely follow his movements, but somehow Fugaku manages to block his attacks and counter them.

"How can he keep up with him? The sharingan?" Kushina asks.

Mikoto nods proudly. "Our dojutsu allows us to see almost everything." She laughs and says, "I wish I had mine, so I could see this fight better."

Fugaku summons his clan's signature fireball. If Minato were any less swift, the fight would be over then and there, but he just barely dodges the jutsu, gets behind Fugaku, and kicks the older boy in the back of the head. Fugaku manages to stay standing, but it's a near thing, and Minato pulls a kunai on him.

 _Come on, come on_ , Kushina thinks. _Get him, Minato_.

But Fugaku catches the kunai with his own, and the fight continues, Minato's speed matched against the predictive capabilities of the sharingan. It goes on for a full half-hour, and Kushina never stops watching.

The Uchiha uses his fireball jutsu again, and the Kyubi whispers, _He's going to burn. Won't be so pretty anymore then, will he?_ Kushina pushes the ugly voice away and watches, relieved, as Minato skirts around the technique, moving out of its range more easily this time.

Fugaku may be able to see his opponent's every move, but he's slowing down and Minato isn't. It only takes one moment's hesitation—and there, he has him. Minato slashes Fugaku across the forehead and blood runs into his eyes, blinding him. It takes another moment for Minato to deliver the final blows, but this is the moment when the fight truly ends.

 _He did it. He won._

Minato, the youngest contender in these exams, flattened the rest of the field without sustaining a single injury. Kushina wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it herself, the way he moved so fluidly through every fight, too quick to catch. Untouchable. Konoha talks of nothing else for days, and when she hears people saying that Minato will be the next Hokage, Kushina doesn't think the idea sounds so stupid anymore.

* * *

Minato is promoted just four days after his eleventh birthday, making him Konoha's youngest chunin in a generation.

Jiraiya says, "Congratulations," and ruffles Minato's hair. "At this rate you'll be a jounin before your voice changes."

He still takes missions with Jiraiya-sensei, Hiroshi, and Yuka, but soon after his promotion, the Hokage sends Minato on his first lone assignment: a B-rank infiltration. The mission directive says he is to break into the vaults of Kusagakure and steal the scrolls containing their kinjutsu.

"Don't we have a peace treaty with the Grass?" Minato asks.

"We do," the Sandaime says. "But that hasn't stopped Kusa nin from attacking our shinobi. If they're not going to honor the terms of the treaty, then neither will we."

Minato nods. "I understand, Hokage-sama."

It takes him almost a full day to reach Kusagakure, then another hour to scout the village and find the place where the vaults are kept. Minato removes his shinobi garb, dresses in the kind of threadbare clothes common to orphans, and sneaks into the alley behind the building, quiet and careful.

There's a single guard on duty, a shinobi in his later years, perhaps forty or forty-five, leaning against the wall, smoking. The end of his cigarette glows brightly, an orange ember in the dark.

"Excuse me," Minato says. He tries to adopt his most pitiful tone, to sound tired and afraid when he asks, "Can you spare some change? Just a few ryo, so I can buy something to eat."

The ninja frowns and Minato draws closer, hands cupped and outstretched.

"Beat it, kid. I'm working," he says.

Something in his tone reminds Minato of Otousan, and he isn't sorry at all when he pulls a kunai from the shinobi's own belt and stabs him in the stomach, too quick for the man to react. He falls to the ground, clutching his belly. When he opens his mouth to scream, Minato hits him in the back of the head, the way Jiraiya-sensei taught him, and the Kusa nin passes out. Blood pools around him, and a little red river of it runs down the sloped alleyway.

He stands still for a moment, watching his enemy bleed, and he wonders if the shinobi will die.

The building is windowless, so he scales it and climbs in through a hatch on the roof. Inside, he finds more guards, and Minato quietly knocks them unconscious, one by one, and leaves them lying prone in the halls, like toppled dominoes.

Stealing the forbidden techniques from the vaults is simple. The chamber where they're kept is booby-trapped, but Minato sees the wires and disables the snares easily enough. Then he quickly searches through the scrolls until he finds the ones that contain kinjutsu, stuffs them in his bag, and leaves the same way he came in.

He should get out of here, head back to Konoha immediately, but Minato stops by the alleyway where the old shinobi lies. He crouches by the man and puts his fingers on his neck, feeling for a pulse that isn't there.

 _I killed him._

He waits for sadness, anxiety, or guilt to come, but Minato doesn't feel anything at all.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Many thanks to uchihasass for her help as the beta for this chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

* * *

Except for her guards, Kushina's grand, old house is empty when she comes home from school, hitai-ate in hand. She graduated today, and tomorrow she begins her life as a Konoha shinobi. She remembers what Mito told her—that she doesn't have to give up Whirlpool to make herself at home in the Leaf—but even after three years, this village remains foreign to her in so many of the ways that matter.

Kushina writes a letter to her family, telling them that she is a full-fledged ninja now. No doubt her parents and older brothers will write back, congratulating her and sending their love. But she would trade a thousand ink and paper promises for one hug from her father, one fond kiss on the cheek from Okaasan. There's no point in wishing for things she'll never have, though, so Kushina cooks a simple dinner for herself and goes to bed.

The next day, she meets her new teacher, Kato Dan, and learns that her genin squadmates are Kitano Haruki and Uchiha Ando.

She and Ando almost ruin their first mission by fighting each other when they're supposed to be taking down the bandits that have been hassling small villages in the south. After three days of staking out one little town after another, they finally caught up with the robbers, but then Ando said she should, "keep her stupid ass out of the way," and Kushina couldn't take that lying down. Dan-sensei isn't the sort to yell, but the look of disappointment he gives them is more than enough to make her feel ashamed.

Once they get back to Konoha, she approaches Ando. "I'm sorry," she says, and the words are a struggle to voice. "I shouldn't have hit you."

"You're right, you shouldn't have," he says, every inch the superior bastard she knows him to be.

"Nevermind, I take it back," Kushina says, and she pushes him in the chest. "Bother me again and I'll knock you into next week, Uchiha."

Ando is too proud to show fear or hesitation, but he doesn't say anything back, and his silence is victory enough for Kushina.

The next few weeks are a mess of missions, doing all kinds of work that she never imagined a Konoha ninja would be paid to perform. Farming, catching cats, pulling weeds. Uzushio shinobi would never stoop so low as to take such work, no matter how well paid for the services rendered, and when Kushina announces this, Ando says, "Why don't you go back to Whirlpool then? Nobody here would miss you."

 _I would if I could_ , she thinks, but the Hokage won't even let her return to Uzushio for a visit. She's too valuable and too vulnerable, he says, but all Kushina hears is _No._

She feels bad for poor, quiet Haruki, always trying to stay out of her fights with Ando. Dan tells them he'll have them stripped of their genin rank if they don't stop behaving so shamefully. Kushina doubts her sensei means that, but she makes an effort not to further provoke Ando just the same. She means to be a great shinobi, to serve her village faithfully and well, and she can't do that if she keeps letting the Uchiha boy get under her skin.

"I hate him," she tells Mikoto. "He's such a brat."

They're sitting on the roof of a weapons shop, eating sweet dango.

"My aunt Airi spoils him," Mikoto says, rolling her eyes. "Ando was a late in life baby, and she treats him like he's made of gold."

"Does his father spoil him too?" Kushina asks.

Mikoto shakes her head. "Reiko, my uncle, was killed on a mission in Lightning Country. I was six or seven that year, so Ando must have been about the same."

Kushina doesn't like to hear this. It makes her feel sorry for the boy she hates, and carrying those two feelings at once is confusing.

"Did you know him?" she asks.

Mikoto nods. "Some. He was a nice man with salt-and-pepper hair, and he carved toys for the little kids in our clan. I still have a wooden horse he made me."

She can hear the sadness in her friend's voice, grief lurking beneath wistful memory. The Uchiha are a close clan, and it seems to Kushina that hurting any one of their kin hurts them all.

* * *

There is only peace in Konoha, but that doesn't mean the Leaf isn't waging war with a half-dozen nations, one small mission at a time.

Minato fights his battles for Konoha without question, and he finds that taking enemy lives is a simple thing. Maybe there's something wrong with him, that he feels no remorse over killing. Minato prefers to think that he's simply a model shinobi, unburdened by unnecessary and distracting things like guilt. His superiors appreciate the cool efficiency with which he eliminates his targets, and more often than not these days the mission directives he receives call for assassination.

Minato doesn't tally his kills like some shinobi do, doesn't keep notches on his belt, and within a year he has lost count of the men and women who are dead because of him. The children, though, they're bothersome. Soldiers no older than fourteen, sent off to fight a shadow war for their elders, just like him. Sometimes at night, when he's trying to sleep, Minato thinks about the boys and girls he has killed. How the only thing separating him from them are the symbols on their hitai-ates.

When he's not on a mission, Minato mostly spends his time training, inventing new jutsu and studying old, forbidden techniques (that aren't truly forbidden at all). Anything to keep him away from home, out from under the same roof as the father he despises. Most boys his age have friends, but Minato has no peers. His acquaintances at the Academy are all genin now, and they run in different circles from him. Besides, they never much liked him anyway. His chunin fellows don't know quite what to do with him, a prodigy of only twelve who could defeat most of them without breaking a sweat.

He still looks out for Uzumaki Kushina, the girl from Whirlpool. She's always easy to spot, with that long red hair she refuses to cut, no matter how much the boys tease her for it. Minato thinks she's only grown prettier with the years, round face and all, and he can't help but admire her spirit, because she never backs down and never gives up.

Even though he's no longer his student, Minato often meets up with Jiraiya-sensei. Sometimes for sparring, sometimes for meals, sometimes for no reason at all. Today, they eat at the same restaurant Jiraiya took him to years ago, back when he was a green genin. He orders the braised pork, just as he did then, and asks his teacher to write a letter of recommendation for him, supporting a promotion to jounin.

Jiraiya laughs around a bite of barbecue. "You think you're ready for S-rank missions, do you?"

Minato nods, a little put off by his sensei's lackluster response.

Jiraiya sighs, runs a hand over his face, and says, "You've been a chunin for what, two years? You know most people never make jounin, and the ones who do only get there after many years of experience in the field."

"I don't accomplish things at the same rate as other people," Minato says. He takes a bite of pork and waits for Jiraiya to answer.

"You're letting all this genius talk get to your head," his sensei says. "Don't get me wrong, Minato, you have more raw talent than any young shinobi I've ever seen. But you're not ready to be a jounin. Not yet."

Minato thinks about the blood on his hands, all the enemy shinobi he has killed. If Jiraiya knew the things he had done already, the missions the Hokage set him, would he still think his student too unseasoned?

He says, "I disagree, sensei, but I appreciate your honest opinion."

"Ask me again in two years," Jiraiya says, "and I'll be happy to write that letter."

Minato nods and thanks his teacher. After lunch, he proceeds to ask two other jounin for recommendations: Kurosawa Aiko (whose life he saved on their last mission) and Hatake Sakumo. He has worked three missions under the White Fang, so the man knows his capabilities. Aiko agrees instantly and promises to have a letter to the Hokage by the next day. Sakumo is more difficult to convince.

"You have the skill," he says, "but you're so young. Maybe too young for this."

"I'm only twelve," Minato says, "but I can handle the responsibilities that come with being a jounin."

Sakumo sighs. "I'll think on it. That's the best you're going to get out of me."

Minato says thank you, then leaves the White Fang in peace.

On Monday, he receives a letter saying that he has been recommended for promotion by two respected jounin. Otousan just scowls when Minato tells him about it, but Okaasan gives him a wavering smile and says she's proud of him. That means more than the letter itself, and he hugs his mother, holding her close enough that he can smell the jasmine scented shampoo on her long, black hair. Namikaze Sayaka is a beautiful woman, even now, after years of marriage to a relentlessly cruel man have worn her down.

"You're a sneaky little bastard," Jiraiya-sensei says, when he hears about the promotion his student may be getting, but he ruffles Minato's messy blonde hair fondly. "I guess that's a good quality for a jounin to have, even if you're not ready for it."

A month later, after he has gone through a screening process more exhausting than even the chunin exams, Minato is promoted. This makes him the first person in Konoha to go from the Academy to the second-highest rank the shinobi world offers in less than four years.

The Sandaime claps him on the back and says, "The future of Konoha looks bright today, Minato. I'll be keeping my eye on you."

* * *

The cherry trees are in bloom. They make Kushina think of Mito, who loved many kinds of flowers, but pretty, pink cherry blossoms most of all. She steals one from a low-hanging branch and carries it with her, feels the softness of its silken petals between her fingers as she walks home.

When she opens the door, Kushina finds that her house is utterly quiet. She calls out to her guards, but no one answers. Nothing greets her but silence as she steps inside. Kushina approaches a small room, her eyes drawn to the window there. And she knows, seconds before she sees them, before she hears them, that she is not alone after all.

They stretch out of the shadows, like extensions of the darkness. She turns, runs, calls for help, but she's too slow and it's too late. They jump on her, hold her down, tie her hands behind her back and then yank her to her feet by the end of the rope. She's leashed like a dog, bound up and surrounded by three enemies. Grown men so alike in demeanor, dress, and build that she can barely tell them apart, all wearing Cloud hitai-ates.

She fights at first, struggles against them when they try to make her walk, but then one of the shinobi punches her in the stomach, once, twice, three times. It hurts so badly that Kushina wants to cry, but she'd rather die than give them the satisfaction of seeing her break down. Once they herd her out the back door, she screams. The enemy nin don't try to stop her; they let her shout, laughing all the while, because this estate is too far removed from the rest of the village for anyone to hear her.

Once she's worn herself out, they tell her to get moving, or they'll knock her unconscious. So Kushina walks. It isn't long before they reach Konoha's perimeter wall. They must have already broken through the jutsu that protects the village on their way in, so now all they have to do is carry her over.

They walk all through the evening, into the night. The enemy nin are moving her in the direction of Kumo, Kushina can tell that much by the stars, and she wonders whether she'll be a pawn in another kage's hands. An outsider in a new village, only this time she's been abducted instead of handed over freely.

Maybe someone will come to save her. No one in Konoha cares about her enough to send a rescue team (except for Mikoto, perhaps), but Kushina knows how powerful the Kyubi is. Surely, as the Nine-Tails jinchuriki, she's a valuable enough resource that they won't let her go without a fight. She has to cling to that hope, or else she's lost.

* * *

Minato is called to the Hokage's office in the middle of the night. He wonders what sort of emergency could have befallen the village that he's being summoned from bed at twelve o'clock. The Sandaime tells him quickly enough: Uzumaki Kushina has been kidnapped, and it's now his job to make sure she's returned to the village.

"This girl's safety is of the utmost importance," the Hokage says. "Make sure she makes it home in one piece."

Minato gives a shallow bow. "Yes, sir."

He heads out of the village, thankful for the full moon that illuminates the woods, casting the midnight landscape in shades of muted silver. Minato heads north and searches for signs of a struggle, footprints in the dirt, anything to put him on the trail toward Kushina.

 _She's going to be all right_ , he thinks. _I'll save her_.

That's when he sees it: a long strand of hair, glinting under the moonlight. Minato picks it up and examines it more closely. It's as bright as the fringe of flames, as maple leaves in autumn, the most beautiful color Minato knows. Red. And a few feet away, there's another one, and another. He picks up the first few strands and grips them in his hand, imagines that they are threads that will pull him closer to Kushina.

Minato comes upon the shinobi just a mile away from the border. He dispatches them with ease, so quickly and quietly that Kushina doesn't even seem to notice she's no longer surrounded by enemies. She looks up at him, weary, confused, and hurt.

"I came to rescue you," he says, smiling.

Kushina smiles back, then falls to her knees. He moves as fast as he can to catch her before she collapses in the dirt. Minato lifts her into his arms and says, "Everything's gonna be fine."

* * *

 _Because I didn't want to lose you._

That's what Minato said, when she asked why he came to help her. Kushina turns these words over in her mind, trying to uncover every facet of meaning. How would her disappearance be a loss to him? They barely know each other.

That's an ungrateful thing to think after he saved her, and besides, it doesn't even feel true, not anymore. Maybe they weren't friends before last night, but now there's something between them, something powerful that Kushina can't quite name.

She didn't even thank him for rescuing her, and now that she's rested, Kushina is ashamed of this. What she wants to do is find Minato, to express her gratitude, but the hospital staff is adamant that she stay for at least a full day, just so they can keep her under observation.

"I'm _fine_ ," she says. "Let me go."

The medic shakes her head. "No way, young lady."

Just as Kushina opens her mouth to argue, someone knocks on the door.

It's Minato. He's holding a bouquet of lilies, looking a little nervous. "Hi," he says. "Can I visit right now?"

"You have fifteen minutes," the medic says. "She needs rest."

Once the woman leaves, Kushina rolls her eyes and says, "Any chance you could rescue me again and get me out of this hospital?"

Minato smiles, puts the flowers in the vase on her side table, and takes a seat in the chair next to her bed. "If you really want to get out of here, I'm sure you could find a way all on your own."

"Probably," she agrees, "but it would be a lot more fun if you helped me sneak out."

She expects him to refuse—at the Academy Minato always seemed like such a rule-follower, always quick to do whatever Koichi-sensei asked—but to Kushina's surprise, he says, "Well, if you really want, we could probably leave through the window and be halfway across Konoha before anybody notices you're gone."

Kushina laughs. "You're not as stuck up as I thought."

Minato's smile slips a little, and she realizes too late how that must have sounded. "I'm sorry," she says. "Sometimes I talk before I think, yanno?"

He shrugs. "It's okay. Want to get out of here?"

She grins and says, "Definitely."

Minato is right; they escape through the window, walk down the three-storied building to the ground below, and slip off the hospital property without anyone being the wiser.

She leads him to her house. New guards have already been assigned to her, it seems, because three shinobi Kushina has never seen before already wait for her inside. The tallest of them frowns and asks, "Who's this boy?"

"This _boy_ is gonna be Hokage someday," Kushina says, "and he saved me last night."

Minato's tan cheeks turn pink and he looks away. "Thanks," he says quietly.

"I should be thanking you," she says. "After everything you did for me."

He follows her through the vast expanse of Mito's house. (It will always be Mito's house to Kushina, no matter how long she lives here without the old woman.) Maybe Minato has never seen so many fine things, or a home with so many rooms, because he keeps staring at everything, sky blue eyes wide. It makes her wonder whether the rumors she heard at school are true, that perhaps his family lives in desperate poverty. If so, this house must seem like a palace to him.

Kushina takes him to the backyard and asks, "Could you teach me some of your moves? I'd like to be able to protect myself better, in case somebody ever tries to take me again."

"Do you think that'll happen?" Minato asks. "The Hokage told me you have special chakra, and that's why the Kumo nin wanted you."

That's half of it. More likely, the Cloud shinobi abducted her because her special chakra allows her to house the Kyubi, and they knew she was a jinchuriki. But Kushina isn't about to tell Minato everything, not when she only just realized he's her friend. She's afraid to reveal that she's a vessel for a despicable creature like the Nine-Tails. Afraid that no one who knows the truth could still love her.


End file.
